Most of the attention on whether Joe Lieberman should be ousted from
his Senate committee chairmanship has focused on his disloyalty to
Democrats and his control of homeland security issues, but there’s also
the question of how well he has handled his panel’s broad government
oversight responsibilities.

In contrast to his House counterpart, Rep. Henry Waxman, who has
chaired dozens of high-profile hearings on the Bush administration’s
wrongdoing the past two years, Sen. Lieberman has not held a single
hearing on Executive Branch malfeasance nor has he issued any subpoenas
demanding information from the administration.

That means Lieberman’s Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs
Committee has passed over for hearings issues such as warrantless
domestic surveillance, Iraq contracting fraud, “enhanced interrogation”
of detainees, and the bungled response to Hurricane Katrina.

Lieberman has seemed determined to ignore issues that put Bush – and
especially his “war on terror” – in a negative light. In 2007,
Lieberman did hold one hearing on "reconstruction challenges in both
Iraq and Afghanistan."

A lifelong Democrat, Lieberman alienated many in the rank-and-file with
his enthusiastic support for Bush’s “war on terror” and the 2003
invasion of Iraq. In 2006, Connecticut Democrats rejected Lieberman as
the party’s Senate nominee, but he kept his seat by running and winning
as an Independent who promised to caucus with the Democrats.

In 2007 and 2008, Lieberman’s membership in the Democratic caucus was
crucial to give the Democrats institutional control of the Senate by a
51-49 margin. But Lieberman angered Democrats again by campaigning for
Republican John McCain, speaking at the Republican National Convention,
and attacking Democrat Barack Obama.

Now, with the Democrats holding a larger Senate majority, some
Democrats favor stripping Lieberman of his chairmanship, but others
fear such a punishment would drive Lieberman into the Republican caucus
or into a resignation that would let Connecticut’s Republican Gov. M.
Jodi Rell pick a GOP replacement.

However, beyond the issue of disciplining a disloyal member of the
Democratic caucus, there is the question of whether Lieberman shirked
his committee’s oversight responsibilities with George W. Bush in
office and now might be more aggressive against a President Obama.

Broad Powers

The broad powers of the governmental affairs committee include studying or investigating:

“The efficiency and economy of operations of all branches of the
Government including the possible existence of fraud, misfeasance,
malfeasance, collusion, mismanagement, incompetence, corruption, or
unethical practices, waste, extravagance, conflicts of interest, and
the improper expenditure of Government funds in transactions,
contracts, and activities of the Government or of Government officials
and employees and any and all such improper practices between
Government personnel and corporations, individuals, companies, or
persons affiliated therewith, doing business with the Government …”

Yet, in the past two years, Lieberman let the Bush administration off
the hook, especially when abuses related to Lieberman’s favored issues,
such as the Iraq War.

So, when Blackwater security contractors killed 17 Iraqi civilians in
Baghdad in September 2007, Rep. Waxman immediately called hearings in
the House and hauled in Blackwater Chief Executive Erik Prince to
testify.

Waxman also released a lengthy report chronicling numerous cases in
which Blackwater employees killed innocent Iraqis without being held
accountable.

Lieberman, in explaining why he decided to sidestep the issue, said at
the time, “You’ve got to set your own priorities and it was clear to me
that other committees were going to pick this up.”

After the Blackwater shootings, Senate Democrats drafted legislation to
set up a wartime contracting commission. Although the legislation had
28 sponsors and co-sponsors, Lieberman did not support the effort.

Explaining his relative disinterest in oversight, Lieberman told the
magazine Government Executive in July, “We don’t like investigating. We
like to do legislation. We don’t like investigating … just to see who
is at fault.”

That became apparent again in July when calls went out to Lieberman’s
committee to investigate former Halliburton subsidiary Kellogg Brown
& Root whose alleged shoddy contract work in Iraq was blamed in the
electrocution of more than a dozen Americans.

Lieberman, who at the time was campaigning heavily for McCain, did not
hold a hearing on the issue. Instead, it was the Democratic Policy
Committee that took the lead.

Overall, Lieberman invests much less of his committee’s resources in
oversight compared to Waxman’s committee. Waxman has 40 investigators,
while Lieberman has only two.

Less Than Charmed

In the Senate, “we have been less than charmed with [Lieberman’s]
oversight,” said Marthena Cowart, a spokeswoman for the watchdog group
Project on Government Oversight.

“We need people who can weigh in on these things who can ask these hard
questions. There has been virtually no oversight from his committee in
the years since the start of the Iraq War.”

Contrasting the two chairmen, Cowart said Waxman “would call his mother to the witness stand” if necessary.

Melanie Sloan, executive director of the government watchdog group
Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington, said Lieberman’s
poor oversight record “should play a bigger role in the Democrats’
decision to keep him on as chairman than his loyalties to the
Democratic Party during the election.”

Lieberman “does not believe in aggressive oversight,” Sloan said. “What
reason is there to think that he will do his job any differently now?
Unless he doesn’t like Obama as much” and decides to scrutinize his
administration’s policy decisions more closely.

In July, a group that called itself “Lieberman Must Go” collected more
than 43,000 signatures that it delivered to Democratic Steering
Committee calling for Lieberman’s removal as chairman of the Senate
Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee.

A Lieberman spokesman said he would issue a response about Lieberman’s
work as committee chairman, but he never sent one nor did he return
calls seeking comment.

Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid recently told CNN’s John King that
Lieberman’s campaigning on behalf of McCain was “improper,” but noted
that Lieberman has a solid Democratic voting record on many domestic
issues.

"Joe Lieberman has done something that I think was improper, wrong, and
... if we weren't on television, I'd use a stronger word of describing
what he did," Reid said. "But Joe Lieberman votes with me a lot more
than a lot of my senators. He didn't support us on military stuff and
he didn't support us on Iraq stuff. You look at his record, it's pretty
good."

In an interview, Jim Manley, a spokesman for Reid, wouldn’t comment on
Lieberman’s lack of oversight and whether that would or should play a
role in the decision to strip him of his chairmanship.

“The bottom line is that he votes with the caucus a majority of the time,” Manley said.

Less Aggressive

Lieberman’s record over the past two years also differs from a more
aggressive style that he displayed when Democrats controlled the Senate
for much of President Bush’s first two years in office.

In 2002, Lieberman doggedly pursued the accounting scandals at Enron.
Lieberman’s committee issued 29 subpoenas to Enron, its former auditing
firm Arthur Andersen and the company’s board members, seeking documents
about the high-flying energy company’s contacts with the Bush
administration on energy policy.

But after the start of the Iraq War, Lieberman began to side more with
the Bush administration, a pattern that has continued since the
Democrats regained control of Congress in 2007. Lieberman backed away
from promises in 2006 that he would dig into the Homeland Security
Department’s inept handling of Hurricane Katrina.

Lieberman’s spokeswoman Leslie Phillips told Newsweek in early 2007
that the senator had decided to “focus his attention on the future
security of the American people and other matters and does not expect
to revisit the White House's role in Katrina."

When Phillips was asked whether Lieberman new stand might lead to
complaints that he had become too cozy with the White House, Phillips
responded: “The senator is an independent Democrat and answers only to
the people who elected him to office and to his own conscience.”